Ann Marie Leimer, professor of art in the Juanita and Ralph Harvey School of Visual Arts at Midwestern State University, is the recipient of the 2025 Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award.

The award was presented Friday, March 28, by Texas Tech University System Chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell, M.D., and MSU Texas President Stacia Haynie.

The teaching award is one of two awards presented annually at each TTU System component institution through the Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching and Research Awards that recognize academic excellence across the Texas Tech University System.

Leimer, who has taught since 1999 and at MSU since Fall 2012, said she entered graduate school with the express interest of becoming a deeply knowledgeable and inspiring teacher, and she has considered it her mission, honor, and privilege to educate a generation of students.

The faculty members who nominated Leimer said she “brings an unmistakable passion for her work, and her work ethic serves as an excellent model for others.”

Leimer added that the most rewarding part of teaching Visual Art is “seeing students develop as critical thinkers and seeing them make connections between art history and their own unique personal vision.”

Leimer served the Harvey School of Arts for eight years (2012-2020) as chair while maintaining a research agenda which included a co-edited anthology on Chicana artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood published by Duke University Press in 2022. Her publications have appeared in the journals Afterimage, Chicana/Latina Studies, Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, Religion and the Arts, in the exhibition catalogs Los Maestros, Tina Fuentes, LatinX, Voices in Concert, and the books American Art since 1900, Border Crossings, Chican@ Critical Perspectives, New Frontiers in Latin American Borderlands, and On the Nude. Leimer received the Fain College of Fine Arts Faculty Scholarship Award in 2021, and she earned the Fain College of Fine Arts Faculty Teaching Award in 2024.